


Until Our Final Journey To The Ground

by Wellamyblake



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Drabble Collection, F/M, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Speculation, s4 spec
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-06 21:05:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8769283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wellamyblake/pseuds/Wellamyblake
Summary: The silence between them hangs for a moment before Bellamy starts in. “So, what did you mean, ‘we didn’t save the world?’”Clarke looks up at his concerned face, willing her eyes to focus. “ALIE’s core command was to make life better. She wasn’t forcing people into the City of Light just because she thought it was better than reality. She did it because she thinks - she knows - we’re all going to die.”*Series of s4 speculation drabbles. They'll be in roughly chronological order and are more like scenes I could see happening and less like a well thought-out plot. Basically me exploring what could happen in s4 through assorted Bellarke Moments^tm





	1. Flare Scare

**Author's Note:**

> Okay guys, I'm hoping to post ~1 of these per weekday at least until the trailer drops, unless of course the trailer never drops and we're all stuck in a Groundhog Day-esque loop in perpetuity and never find out what happens in s4. Enjoy!

On the Ark, solar flares weren’t just an astronomical anomaly to be studied in a classroom. The rare flashes of radiation were a direct threat to the two thousands souls onboard, and in that capacity, a threat to the very future of humanity. Clarke remembers how, when a flare was detected, Ark guards and officials would usher nervous children, disinterested teenagers and concerned adults into specially-constructed, reinforced cargo holds, where the disparate citizens of the Ark would sometimes wait for hours until the coast could be declared clear.

When the flare alarms went off, it always felt like the curtain being wrenched back on Ark life. It was a jarring reminder of how fragile their outpost was, a moment when people became suddenly aware of the void of space around them and its propensity to kill given the chance. 

The sharp disillusionment accompanying “flare scares,” as they were known, also extended to the internal workings of the Ark community. Because of the short notice before a flare, citizens were directed to the nearest hold to take cover, regardless of their home station. Farm station workers delivering food to factory station, medical staff in a consultation on Mecha, kids from factory station who prefered to spend afternoons with their well-off friends in Alpha, all of them crammed into the nearest hold. Clarke remembers the surreality of it; at times she went days without speaking to someone not from Alpha Station, but on flare days, she could feel the buzz of energy - of tension, excitement, fear - that permeated the citizens in the hold, segregated no more.

As Clarke stands on the dias of Lexa’s throne room, Bellamy’s hand still wrapped around her wrist, and watches Octavia stalk out of it, she wonders, suddenly, where Octavia had ridden out flare scares on the Ark. She thinks of a little girl missing out on the one experience that all her people shared, the bizarre moments in time that simultaneously reminded everyone on the Ark not only of their own mortality, but also of their unity. 

She tries to picture Octavia huddled under her floorboard, the comforting sounds of her mother and brother gone, the compartment above her deathly quiet as she waits for an imaginary fire to incinerate her. In this moment, even with Pike bleeding out on the floor, Clarke thinks she understands this girl a little better; always separate, always waiting for the spasms of the sun to overtake her.

...

The throne room in the hours following ALIE’s defeat resembles the Ark after a flare scare. There’s the same initial bewildering confusion and fear, the same feeling of comfort and security being suddenly ripped away. The biggest difference is that the chaos of the throne room is directionless. Grounders and sky people alike - suddenly aware of their surroundings, their injuries, their actions - have begun moaning on the floor, searching for faces of loved ones, pacing aimlessly around the room. 

Bellamy’s presence at her back is the only thing that keeps Clarke grounded as the survivors lick their wounds and begin to look for a way down from the top of the tower. Sometimes the support is quite literal, as the blood transfusion and lack of sleep leave Clarke barely able to keep her feet. 

After Clarke lets Abby gingerly and apologetically bandage the wound she herself inflicted, they form a triage corner off to the side of Lexa’s throne. Clarke begins methodically identifying those who need immediate attention and Bellamy helps to carry them towards Abby to be patched up. Miller and Kane lead the effort to find a way down from the tower, joined by a few grounders who have managed to pull themselves together, and eventually by Octavia, after she’d realized there was no way for her to get down alone. 

Through the haze of exhaustion, Clarke can feel how reluctant Bellamy is to wander more than a few feet from her, despite his frequent concerned glances at his sister when she passes through the throne room. While Clarke’s glad for his proximity, she realizes soon she’ll have to explain what she meant when she said they hadn’t saved the world. Bellamy seems to sense that the threat she spoke of wasn’t an immediate priority, and is content to hang by her side until they have time to talk. 

That time doesn’t come until the darkness descending over Polis makes continued labor impossible. Even with candles available, everyone is too exhausted or too injured to try and work by them, so by unspoken mutual agreement the 30 or so people trapped at the top of Polis tower lay down to rest. 

The balcony had been barricaded to forestall any more suicides after a couple of jumpers early in the day, and the closed doors leave the throne room stuffy and crowded as people try to find places to rest.

When Bellamy finally nudges Clarke’s elbow, signalling that they too should find a spot, she leads him away away from Abby’s triage station. The scent of blood all around the dias compounds the dizziness brought on by Clarke’s exhaustion, but she knows she has to tell Bellamy about the reactors before she sleeps. Better to do it before nightmares rob her of her courage.

She tugs Bellamy’s sleeve as they walk down the corridor from the throne room, passing prone bodies - both the sleeping and the dead - before reaching the door to Lexa’s bedroom. Miller and Bryan, the latter with a makeshift tourniquet adorning his thigh, lean against the wall next to the entrance, dead asleep.

Bellamy, seeing where they’re headed, tries the door only to find it locked. Clarke nudges past him and pulls a key from the waistband of her pants. It slides into the lock, which makes little noise as Clarke releases it and opens the door just wide enough for her and Bellamy to slide inside. At Bellamy’s confused expression, she shrugs unapologetically.

“I grabbed it out of Jaha’s jacket when Mom was treating him. Figured we’d need the privacy.” Clarke shuts the door behind them, but hesitates when she turns to take in the room before her.

It hits her almost like a shockwave, the memories this place holds. She imagines for a moment she can still see Lexa’s black blood soaking through the bedsheets, but of course Ontari had them changed. Still, Clarke can’t bring herself to sit on the bed, instead sliding tiredly down to the floor with the bed frame to her back. 

Bellamy follows her lead, sitting with his back against the wall across from her, close enough that if she stretched out her legs they’d touch his bent ones. He doesn’t ask why they’re not using any of the perfectly good furniture in the room. He only looks at her with expectant, clear eyes. The amount of compassion in them, as it often does when she meets Bellamy’s eyes, takes her off guard.

The silence between them hangs for a moment before Bellamy starts in. “So, what did you mean, ‘we didn’t save the world?’”

Clarke looks up at his concerned face, willing her eyes to focus. “ALIE’s core command was to make life better. She wasn’t forcing people into the City of Light just because she thought it was better than reality. She did it because she thinks - she knows - we’re all going to die.”

She pauses to take a breath and he raises his eyebrows and gestures for her to continue. He looks...haunted, but calm, and for a moment she wants to giggle about how unreal this conversation is. After everything, the prospect of mass death no longer ruffles the calm between them. 

“The Earth has less than six months before it won’t be survivable. Radiation levels are rising as we speak because nuclear reactors around the world are melting down.”

Clarke fills him in on everything ALIE said, everything ALIE and Becca told her when she was in the City of Light. Even in her exhaustion, his steady attention and the crushing need to unburden herself keep her talking for at least half an hour, punctuated by short questions or clarifications from Bellamy. When she’s finished, she lets her head rest back against the bed, feeling lighter than she has in a long while. 

She looks at Bellamy and sees him processing and pushing any panic he has as far down as he can. She knows the feeling. After a few deep breaths, he surprises her by moving across the space between them to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with her against the bed. Her eyes follow him as he turns his face to look at her.

“Do you believe her?” His voice is deep and soothing but also has a finality to it. If she says yes, this will become real. 

Even though telling Bellamy loosened the pressure inside her, it also makes the problem feel so much more real. She supposes she could have kept ALIE’s information to herself, let her people die as peacefully as possible, not knowing what was coming until it was there. But really, she thinks, she’d made that decision as soons as she’d turned to Bellamy on that dias. She’d seen him, bloodied and bruised from fighting to protect her and their people, and she couldn’t imagine giving up. Since the very beginning, since the ring of fire, having Bellamy by her side has always made her want to _fight_.

“Yes.” She says simply, seeing the knowledge harden in his eyes. “Neither ALIE nor Becca disputed it, and it makes sense. Without anyone on Earth to regulate the plants, it makes sense that they would overheat eventually...” She strains to remember any more information she may have encountered on nuclear reactors in her Ark Physics class, but with Bellamy’s warm body pressed against her side and her secret finally out, it was becoming impossible to fight sleep.

“Okay. Once we’re back in Arkadia, we can start gathering info. Decide who to tell first. Raven, for sure.” She can see how steady his gaze is on her, even under her droopy eyelids. “We’re going to figure something out, Clarke. I know we will.”

Perhaps it’s the blood transfusion, or the torture, or the sheer number of hours it’s been since she’s slept, but in this moment she believes him. She lets herself believe that they will find a way to survive. She feels his small jump of surprise when she leans her head against his shoulder, and his short hesitation before he rests his cheek against her hair.

She blows out a long breath. “I know. But can we figure it out later?”

She can’t see his face, but in her heart she knows a small smile has crept onto his lips.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

They fall asleep there together, leaning on each other in more ways than one.


	2. Heaven's Door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The journey from Polis back to Arkadia feels like some sort of perverted deja vu. If not for a few key differences, Clarke might think she was reliving the walk back to Camp Jaha after irradiating Mt. Weather. The setting is the same: Bellamy at her side, her people surrounding her - banged up but alive, with worse internal wounds than external. Even her mother and Kane, holding hands. And just as it did on the day the sky people left behind an empty mountain, the cloudless sky does nothing to reflect the inner turmoil Clarke feels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 as promised *waits patiently for trailer* Enjoy!

The journey from Polis back to Arkadia feels like some sort of perverted deja vu. If not for a few key differences, Clarke might think she was reliving the walk back to Camp Jaha after irradiating Mt. Weather. The setting is the same: Bellamy at her side, her people surrounding her - banged up but alive, with worse internal wounds than external. Even her mother and Kane, holding hands. And just as it did on the day the sky people left behind an empty mountain, the cloudless sky does nothing to reflect the inner turmoil Clarke feels.

But there is one key difference between that day and this one. She feels the difference inside herself. She is a different person than the one whose soul felt as if it were being slowly siphoned out of her body with each step she took away from Mt. Weather. 

Instead, as Polis tower gets smaller and smaller in the distance, Clarke feels like flying away from her body for completely different reasons. Not to shake off the guilty weight of what she’s done, but to avoid facing the spectre of what is to come.

She’d managed to put it off for almost a day and half as she, Bellamy, Abby and Kane rounded up their people to leave Polis once they’d climbed down from the tower. There had been some talk of staying, especially from Kane, who felt that in order to assure stability moving forward the sky people should be involved in the rebuilding of grounder society. 

Clarke, on the other hand, had no desire to stay in a place that held so many confusing, painful memories. And she knew they would need the sky people’s technology to address the radiation problem, so she was relieved when Indra was the one who was finally able to convince Kane that now was not the time. 

While Indra didn’t say it in so many words, Clarke could tell the grounder woman feared the same thing she did: that in the absence of an explanation for had happened that would make sense to most grounders, the clans would hold the sky people accountable for ALIE, and for the near destruction of their society. Clarke couldn’t help but think that they wouldn’t be entirely wrong to do so, either. 

So when the surviving sky people finally cross the border of Polis, leaving legions of traumatized, armed and angry grounders looking for someone to blame behind them, Clarke takes a short-lived breath of relief. It’s only a matter of minutes, however, before that relief is crushed again by anxiety, and the accompanying need to escape it. 

But, she thinks, even that need to escape feels different than it did before, when she left her people. Before, she could barely look Bellamy in the eyes as they walked side by side for the first hour of the trip home. She couldn’t trust her voice to answer him as he recounted what had happened to him in the Mountain. 

Instead, she had let him lead their people home, falling back to bring up the rear of the pack herself. This time, she knows the burden she feels isn’t hers alone. She feels a sharp spike of gratitude that this is the case, and can’t help but reach over to squeeze Bellamy’s hand as she feels it. He looks up at her, startled by the sudden pressure of her hand.

“You okay?” he glances over at her mid-stride, deep brown eyes meeting hers. She can see rivulets of sweat snaking down his hairline, connecting the freckles on his face. She’d forgotten how many freckles he has in the sunlight. She knows the heat and exertion must make her look a wreck too.

“Yeah,” she replies. Even she can't tell if she’s lying.

…

Fingers squeezing his palm wrench Bellamy’s attention away from Octavia, whose form he watched fifteen yards ahead of him in the group of sky people slowly making their way south towards Arkadia. Bellamy keeps expecting his sister to veer off, but she hasn’t left Indra’s side since she took the older woman off the cross and had Abby dress her wounds. She and her mentor appear content to stick with the flow of the group for now.

When he turns to see Clarke still next to him, clearly the perpetrator of the hand grab, he’s surprised. 

“You okay?” He asks. She still looks tired, but the intermittent sleep they’ve gotten since ALIE’s defeat seems to be doing her some good. 

“Yeah,” she says, a curious look on her face. Her eyes follow the path his gaze had been on before she’d touched him.

“Have you talked to her yet?” She looks up at him again and, like always, he can’t help but feel like her crystal blue eyes see everything.

“No. She won’t even look at me,” he watches Octavia stride ahead of them and marvels for a moment at how sure, how strong she looks. He knows she isn’t. He knows she can’t meet his eyes because he’ll see the brokenness in hers, the grief and desperate anger that has roots so deep she doesn’t even know where it comes from sometimes. 

He wonders if he’s as convincing as Octavia when he puts his walls up, when he tries to hide how hurt or lost or pathetic he really is. He thinks about the mask he once made for Octavia on Unity Day, about how ironic a gift that is for the Blakes.

“I told you, she just needs time.” Clarke says it gently, like she did by Luna’s beach. Just like that night, he remains unconvinced: that there will ever be enough time, that he even deserves her forgiveness at all. 

“Well from what I understand, time is something we _don’t_ have.” Clarke gives a small nod in acknowledgement. “I know she’s not going to stay in Arkadia. But if she’s with Trikru, at least I’ll be able to get a message to her. Once we figure out what we’re doing about this.” 

It seems almost arrogant, to treat the inevitable end of the Earth like just another problem he and Clarke have to “do something about,” but Bellamy thinks he’ll go crazy if he truly allows the enormity of what they face to sink in.

Clarke appears to feel the same way. She nods matter-of-factly, eyes on the forest floor ahead of her as she steps over a tangle of roots. “I think the first thing to do is tell Raven.” She looks up at him again. “If anyone can help us figure out if this timeline is for real, it’s her.”

Bellamy nods his agreement, but keeps his eyes on Clarke as she turns back to the trail in front of them. He senses she’s holding something back.

“When do you want to tell the others?” 

He sees her jaw lock in response to his question - this is what she was holding back.

“Not until we know how long they have.” Her voice is steady, hard, until she turns her face towards him again and continues more softly, “Just let them have this.” 

He looks around at their people and knows exactly what she’s talking about. He doubts he’ll ever be able to describe his friends or the people of Arkadia as “light-hearted” ever again, but the sky people, supporting each other as they cross the terrain towards home, seem… content. There’s a sense of hope about them - or at least an absence of a sense of doom. He can’t help but want to keep it that way a bit longer.

Bellamy nods in agreement, and somehow the blissful ignorance of his people make the knowledge he has weigh even heavier on his heart. 

…

Walking through the gates of Arkadia is harder than she expected. After all, Clarke had entered the camp only days ago in search of a map to Luna. But this is different. Then, it had been a ghost town, just unrecognizable empty earth that held something she needed. 

Today, in the sunlight, it is Camp Jaha awaiting the return of Wanheda once more, and she feels a lump rise in her throat. She stops short outside the gate as her people stream in around her, some with palpable relief on their faces, some even falling to their knees once inside. She sees them wander towards what must be their quarters, or their families’ quarters, or the mess hall. And that’s when she realizes it. 

This is not Camp Jaha awaiting its conquering hero, and it is not her memories of that day that paralyze her. This is these people’s home, and all she has to do to make it hers too is to walk forward. But walking forward means she _has_ a home to lose, it means another thing to grieve as the cloud of radiation looms closer. It means taking these people as her family, and likely losing them as her family. And she’s already lost so _much_.

She sees her mother turn back when she’s through the gate, and their eyes meet. They haven’t talked much since ALIE was defeated, but treating the injured in Polis together hadn’t only healed physical wounds. There was a familiarity to healing by her mother’s side that did more than words could to repair the damage between them. 

Now, still rooted to the ground outside the gate, Clarke thinks Abby might call out to her, or walk back towards her, but something over Clarke’s shoulder catches her mother’s eye and Abby turns back towards the Ark. It’s then that Clarke feels a large, calloused, familiar hand slip into hers.

“You ready?” He asks softly. Somehow, he knows how difficult this is for her. Of course he knows. He’s the one who watched her struggle not to collapse in on herself outside this very gate those many months ago.

She squeezes his hand in hers. “Do I have a choice?” She means for the question to sound lighthearted, but when it comes out it just sounds broken.

“We always have a choice.” The way he says it makes her think he’s not just talking about walking through this gate. She nods. Bellamy’s skin on hers reminds her that she already does have something to lose, whether she walks through that gate or not.

“Okay then.” She’s done being afraid. Maybe having something to lose just means having something else to fight for. 

When she looks back at this moment in the future, standing outside the gate with Bellamy, she knows this is the moment she chose to fight. That this is the moment she decided the apocalypse would kill her before it defeated her. 

When she looks up and meets his eyes, he doesn’t have to say it for her to see the word in his eyes. _Together_. And that’s how Bellamy and Clarke finally walk through the gates of Arkadia, ready to face the end of the world.


	3. Quoth the Raven "Two Months"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But now, Clarke's unexpected question in the quiet startles Bellamy for a second, and he picks his head up off the wall from where it rested above his chair. He considers her for a moment, the low light of the computers just enough to illuminate her hair, her eyes piercing as usual. 
> 
> "Well, I knew who you were," He answers, not quite sure where she's going with this. "I mean, even a lowly Janitor knew who Abby Griffin's daughter was. And I'd seen you a few times before."
> 
> She squints her eyes at him like she's thinking, apparently unconcerned with the implication that while he'd known her, she hadn't known he existed until they'd landed on Earth. "You know that's not what I meant. I mean, do you think we would have been... friends?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 3...still no trailer.....also enjoy this one because the next couple aren't as light-hearted bc I have an angst boner
> 
> I apologize for the chapter title but one simply cannot pass up such an excellent opportunity to pun Poe

"Do you think we ever would have met each other on the Ark?"

Bellamy looks up as Clarke's voice echoes around what used to be one of the Ark's control rooms. It's late as they wait for Raven's models to cycle through their options for survival. Inputting the data that Raven, Bellamy, and Clarke had managed to scrounge up about the closest geographical power plants had been no easy task, and Raven had opted for a nap after she was done. Muttering something about needing to find “a room with less tension,” she’d left Clarke pacing nervously in front of the monitors while Bellamy tracked her movements from a chair in the corner.

It had been at least a couple of hours since Raven left, and Clarke's pacing had slowed until she perched herself on a metal table in the middle of room. Without the sound of her footfalls, the room grow peacefully quiet, the soft whirring of the gerry-rigged computer system the only thing Bellamy can hear beyond his own heartbeat. 

But now, Clarke's unexpected question in the quiet startles Bellamy for a second, and he picks his head up off the wall from where it rested above his chair. He considers her for a moment, the low light of the computers just enough to illuminate her hair, her eyes piercing as usual. 

"Well, I knew who you were," He answers, not quite sure where she's going with this. "I mean, even a lowly Janitor knew who Abby Griffin's daughter was. And I'd seen you a few times before."

She squints her eyes at him like she's thinking, apparently unconcerned with the implication that while he'd known her, she hadn't known he existed until they'd landed on Earth. "You know that's not what I meant. I mean, do you think we would have been... friends?"

This thoughtful, almost wistful side of Clarke is something Bellamy's never seen before, and considering their current circumstances, he finds it a bit alarming. But then again, as he really looks at her, her eyes off in space again, he remembers a different moment, from another lifetime, when she'd asked him: _Think you can wish on this kind of shooting star?_ He remembers looking at her then as he is now, with perhaps only slightly less awe. He remembers how even then, when they were always at odds, he had felt compelled to answer her. 

"I don't know." He says, but because he wants to be honest, adds, "Probably not. I would have hated you."

She snorts a little at that, catching him by surprise both because he can't remember the last time anything like mirth crossed her face and because his answer was completely serious. He can’t remember having anything but contempt for the upper class on the Ark. 

“Yeah, I guess so…” She smiles slightly. “And it’s not as if we hit it off as soon as we landed either.”

Miraculously, Bellamy finds himself grinning back at her. “There was definitely an adjustment period.”

They look at each other with laughter sparkling in their eyes, the end of the world forgotten for one brief moment. Clarke looks away first, eyes scanning the room. “I just haven’t thought of the Ark in so long. And I barely spent any time here, with you, before…” She drifts off, realizing where her train of thought has taken her.

“Before you left.” He finishes her thought simply, no bitterness detectable in his voice. Being angry with her is not something Bellamy can afford anymore, not something his heart can stand.

She nods, and there’s less pain in her eyes than when they’ve broached this topic before. He remembers what she said about trying to forgive herself, and for a minute he’s bitter that she even has to; that the world has punished her for being broken, that _he_ has punished her. 

She shakes him out of his reverie by continuing. “I just can’t help but feel like it’s happening all over again. The Ark running out of oxygen, now the Earth dying. I even remember my Dad running the diagnostics over and over.” She glances at Raven’s computer bank, still mapping data points, building to a conclusion Bellamy’s not even sure he wants to hear. 

“I remember him and my mom fighting over whether to tell anyone. I remember being so... scared.” Her voice cracks a bit on the last word and she looks up at him, their earlier, lighter moment having disappeared completely. 

The emotion in her voice reminds Bellamy how close she was to everything that had happened on the Ark. The space station running out of oxygen had seemed so abstract to him when he and his sister - his whole world, at the time - were on the ground. Then, as now, it had been Clarke who had made it real for him - her accusing finger in his chest, just a small precursor to the crushing weight that would take her finger’s place when the victims of the Culling had fallen back to Earth. 

“It’s not the same thing. The Ark was a death trap and we have the whole planet to work with. We’ll find someplace safe,” he responds, trying to convince himself as well as her.

She looks like she wants to believe him, but they both know that the whole planet’s not an option. They both know how likely it is that Raven’s computer will tell them that the closest scrap of survivable land is unreachable to them.

She taps her finger softly on the table beneath her, looking down at the floor like she’s in a different place or time. “Even if we find someplace - how are we going to tell them, Bellamy?” She looks back up at him, eyes suddenly burning fiercely. “They just got their minds back. They’ve just got their home back! Their hope that maybe this endless war can _end_.”

She looks at him like she’s waiting for answers she knows he can’t give, and he knows she’s thinking of her mother and Kane. The former chancellors had helped shepherd their people back to Arkadia after Polis had dissolved into chaos, while Bellamy and Clarke had begun strategizing on how to share their news with Raven, the only one in whom they’d confided so far. 

Bellamy remembers Clarke eying Abby’s smile when Kane looped her arm with his. He knows the feeling; he’s seen Kane and Jasper and others freed from ALIE since it ended, as well as the triumphant crew of delinquents that had saved them all. There is a current of new life among their people, mixed as it is with pain and trauma. He can’t imagine burdening them with this new, unbeatable enemy. This new impending doom.

“I know. But our people have been through worse. They’re strong. When the time comes… they’ll handle it.” Bellamy knows Clarke loves their people as much as he does, but wonders sometimes if her absence after Mt. Weather - her lack of first-hand knowledge about how hard their people are willing to work to start over, about the sacrifice and hurt they can bear - if that sometimes causes her to underestimate them. To want to coddle them. “They’re strong, Clarke.”

She swallows, some of her momentarily manic energy ebbing. “I know they’re strong. I just, never thought I’d be my father. Never thought I’d have to make this decision, just like him. Alone, like him.”

“Hey,” Bellamy responds sharply, drawing her gaze, “You’re not alone.”

She gives him a grateful look, and her face hints that she’s actually starting to believe it - that they’re in this together. After everything that’s happened, they both need the reminder every once in awhile. 

He softens his voice. “We’ll figure something out. We always do.” She hides an ironic smile at his words and he wonders what she’s thinking. 

“We do, don’t we?” She murmurs, only a little sardonically.

“Hell, if everyone takes it like Raven did, we’ll be safe in no time.” He remembers telling Raven. After absorbing the information, she glanced between Bellamy and Clarke for a moment, as if to assess whether or not they were joking. When convinced of their seriousness, she had immediately jumped into problem-solving mode, causing relief to slacken some of the tension in Clarke’s shoulders. Sometimes it’s easy to feel invincible with Raven on their side.

“Raven’s special.” Clarke agrees. She opens her mouth to continue, but is interrupted by a sardonic voice in the doorway.

“Yes she is, I’ve been _waiting_ for someone to notice.” Raven’s voice interrupts Bellamy and Clarke’s private bubble as she ambles into the room, an instant presence despite the awkwardness of her gait.

“You two done gossiping? God knows there won’t be a lot of time for pillow talk over the next few months.” Raven presses several keys in the computer, her teasing only half-hearted as she scans the redoubts. Clarke only has a minute to look embarrassed before hopping down off the table and intently leaning in over Raven’s shoulder. 

“What’s it say?” She asks, voice hedged in a way that makes it sound like she doesn’t really want the answer. “How long do we have before Arkadia isn’t survivable?” Raven waves a hand at her over her shoulder, motioning Clarke to back off while she finishes whatever she’s doing. 

Bellamy slowly stands up as the two women hover behind the monitor. He takes a few tentative steps forward - for support or to hear the answer to Clarke’s question, he doesn’t know. 

Raven starts talking while still staring at the computer. “Without more specific readouts from the reactors there’s no way to pinpoint a date. But using reasonable estimates of the rate at which a nuclear plant would degrade if left unattended….” She turns and glances between Clarke and Bellamy. “There’s no way this place will be survivable more than two months from now.”

Bellamy absorbs the blow while Clarke’s mouth falls open, taking a second to formulate words.

“But- ALIE said it would take six months! She said we’d have more time than that.”

“Well, I don’t think she was wrong, Clarke. I think she must have meant that the world itself only has six months. The rate at which land will become uninhabitable will depend almost entirely on its proximity to nuclear reactors.” She turns back to the screen, searching the readout like it might tell her something new. “From what we were able to find out about nuclear power in this area from the Ark’s system, we’re not anywhere close to the 4% of land that might be safe when this is over.”

Clarke glances at Bellamy in response to Raven’s words, and he can see the beginnings of defeat shroud her blue irises. 

He turns his attention to Raven. “What about dismantling them? Could we neutralize enough to _create_ a safe space here, near Arkadia?” Bellamy realizes dismantling nuclear reactors would likely be a suicide mission in and of itself, but it’s not like it would be the first one he had undertaken for his people. 

Raven sighs, turning to face them again and finding two pairs of eyes looking to her for answers. “Honestly, I don’t know. This timeline is short, and I’m not even sure that once a nuclear reactor has started melting - or burning - if there’s any way to cool it down. Enhanced brain or no, I’m not a nuclear engineer.”

A silence lingers between the three of them at her words. Bellamy feels as if they’re standing at the precipice of a monstrous abyss, and they’re all afraid to look down. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s Raven who breaks the silence. Her eyes are earnest, the most vulnerable he’s seen Raven in while. He thinks choosing her pain over ALIE might have given her a new type of strength, one he can feel as she appeals to him and Clarke. 

“We have to tell them. I need more _minds_. Anyone with a scientific, mechanical, engineering background - hell, anyone who ever paid attention in Earth History - we’re gonna need them to figure out the answer. Even if the answer’s leaving - we have to figure out where to _go_. We’ll need maps, information on reactor locations, scouts. I know Sinclair’s gone, but -” She swallows, visibly refocusing, “there are other people in this camp who can help us solve this.” Bellamy sees Raven lock eyes with Clarke, silently communicating the impossibility of continuing to keep this problem to themselves. Clarke returns her stare before turning to Bellamy. He gives her a small nod: _We don’t have a choice_.

Clarke sees the message in his eyes and she hardens. Not in a closed-off way, but in the way she always does when she’s come to a decision. Her back straightens, her chin lifts, her eyes clear. In this moment, Bellamy thinks there’s no way he _wouldn’t_ have met her on the Ark. No way her gravity wouldn’t have eventually sucked him into orbit. In these moments, when Clarke decides she’s bigger than whatever problem she’s facing, Bellamy can’t help but be in awe of her.

“So we tell them.” Clarke’s voice is surprisingly soft, juxtaposed to her tense posture. “We’ll start with my mother and Kane, then the rest of the 100. We’ll use their reactions to gauge how to tell the group.”

Bellamy nods. “Kane’s technically the Chancellor by default now anyway. Might be best to let him bear the bad news.” 

Bellamy’s neck is still sore from where Kane’s hands were wrapped around it and, ALIE aside, he’s sure his relationship with the other man isn’t repaired yet. Might never be. But the people of Arkadia have already weathered one Exodus under Kane and Abby, and relying on people’s comfort with certain authorities might be the best strategy they have.

With the decision made, Bellamy, Clarke and Raven look between each other, suddenly viscerally aware of the storm that’s coming. Of how the next months will test their people and themselves; of how this very moment, in this abandoned room of the fallen Ark, could shape the fate of humankind.

It’s Raven who breaks the pregnant pause. “Well, it’s not like I wanted a vacation anyway.”


	4. Demons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every word of encouragement and conviction that they will survive this that he’s given to Clarke over the past five days plays on a loop in his head. He meant it, every time. His belief in her and in their people has never wavered. And no part of him can bear Clarke in pain, so he’d told her: we’ll figure something out. 
> 
> But something about it had felt empty, almost insincere, and he hadn’t realized what it was until now. The salvation that he wants for his people and that he and Clarke will fight to find; it’s not for him. He feels a kind of perverse relief as he admits it to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this trailers never coming is it...
> 
> SO I'm sorry in advance about the #angst in this chapter. It was a hard one to write because it was basically an exercise in where I feel like the Blakes could go in s4. Writing Octavia is also hard because even the canon writers can't figure out how to do it lol. That said, your honest opinions are welcome and I hope you enjoy (?) it!

Bellamy finds Octavia in her and Lincoln’s quarters. It’s been less than a week since the sky people reached Arkadia, and part of Bellamy is actually surprised that Octavia is still there. He knows it’s not sentimentality that keeps her; she’s not the type of person who wouldn’t leave behind her and Lincoln’s things. Some small part of Bellamy thinks maybe, just maybe, she hesitates to leave _him_ , but the rational part of his brain, and the part that can still feel her blows landing on his face, knows that can’t be true. 

When he and Clarke and Raven made the decision to tell people what was going on, Bellamy knew he had to get to Octavia first. That if there was any chance of her staying, he’d have to talk to her. To make her see that the safest place was with her people. _With me_ , a pathetic voice in his head adds.

From behind, Bellamy doesn’t even recognize his sister. Her hair is long and matted, and she’s taller and more wiry than he thought. She’s standing in front of the table at the center of the room, the one that brings back memories of Clarke’s thumb on his wrist, Clarke’s tears at his words - memories he can’t afford to be distracted by. 

Octavia’s fingers are deft as they sort through Lincoln’s weapons, and Bellamy allows himself to wonder at the fact that his sister - who’d grown up so far removed from physical violence, who had cried once when he came home with a black eye because she hadn’t understood what happened - could be so comfortable and at home with deadly weapons. These days, Bellamy can’t escape the seeping shame he feels when he grips a rifle, but Octavia stands calmly at the table, handling Lincoln’s knives as if the blades themselves calm her. Maybe they do, he thinks. Maybe weapons were her first defense against a strange world.

“O,” he calls out to her, and the nickname sticks a little in his throat. It hurts to call her that.

She doesn’t turn at his voice, and he wonders how long she knew he was watching her. 

“What do you want, Bell?” Her back is still turned to him, but her voice seems more tired than angry.

He walks further into the room until he stands at the side of the table adjacent to her; not quite across from her, not quite next to her.

“I need to talk to you about something.”

She looks over at him for the first time, but she’s still hiding behind her eyes.

“I’m going with Indra to Trikru. We’re leaving in an hour.” Bellamy wishes her words surprised him more. He supposes they only waited so Indra could return to full strength before rejoining her clan after the crucifixion ordeal. 

“O, I know you feel like you have to leave, but you can’t right now. We didn’t save the world. The land out there - this land - is going to be overrun with radiation in two months. That’s what I came here to tell you.” He knows how crazy he sounds, can see it reflected back at him in her familiar eyes.

“What are you talking about?”

“In the City of Light. Clarke learned from ALIE and Becca that radiation is spreading, from old nuclear plants that are combusting. Raven ran the models - O, most of the Earth won’t be survivable. We have to come up with a plan to fight this or find a place to run to.” He pauses, but she remains quiet, so he finishes, “But you won’t survive out there alone. We need to face this together.” 

Her face is frustratingly difficult to read. “Clarke told you this?”

“Yeah. But it was ALIE and Becca that told her - the science doesn’t lie, and Raven confirmed it.” Her mistrust for Clarke flickers in her eyes, and he’s surprised at how painful it is to see. “It’s real, O.”

He whispers the last words, and he thinks it’s probably the blatant fear in his voice that finally gets her to look him in the eye.

“Maybe so. What difference does it make? So we all die a little earlier than we thought.” Her voice is bitter, like she’s trying for venom but can’t quite manage it. “What else did we expect from the ground?” She says the last thing more to the room in general than to him.

“Octavia... this isn’t you. We can survive this.” He continues, even as she’s beginning to shake her head. “We just have to start scouting, gathering intel, finding ways to survive. With the rover and your knowledge of the grounders we could talk -”

“God - stop!” Her outburst cuts him off. She’s leaning over the table, eyes shut, her hands gripping the edge of the metal so hard they’ve turned white. When she speaks again, there is immeasurable hurt in her voice, like she’s choking back angry tears. “I can’t - I _can’t_ just wait around. I can’t stay here, and talk to people and make plans, and come back to this - this empty room every day. Like everything’s normal. It’s not. I - “ She looks up at him, and there’s regret in her eyes but it’s drowned out by anger and grief. “I _hate_ them, Bellamy.” Her voice is ragged. “I hate them for what they did to him - god, what they did to _me_ \- and I _can’t be here anymore_.” 

Bellamy barely feels the blow of her hate. It’s nothing the twinge of the skin on his face doesn’t attest to with every word he speaks. No, his pain comes from the look in his little sister’s eyes, eyes that used to go round when he walked into their cabin, eyes that used to beg him for more stories - about the jungle, the roman empire, Cleopatra. Eyes that now look like they belong in a rabid animal, begging for escape.

More than anything, he wishes he could tell her how little running will help. How little it will do to ease the pain she’s really trying to escape. After all, he knows about the need to run from your demons. He remembers countless nights, staring past the gate, wanting nothing more than to leave, too. Convincing himself that if he left Arkadia he’d be leaving the pain of Clarke’s abandonment behind too. 

Bellamy swallows the memories. “If you leave, you’ll die, O. We need to fight this -”

“There’s nothing to fight.” At his confused look, she continues. “You can’t kill radiation, Bellamy. I can’t be here and I’m no help figuring this out. All I know how to do is fight.” Something about the way she says those last words make Bellamy think they aren’t her own. The anguish has drained out of her eyes when she finishes, leaving only the stubborn wall that was in place when he entered. “So when you find something to fight, you let me know.”

With that, she tucks the last blade into her belt and stalks out of the room.

_All I know how to do is fight._ Her words ring in his ears. He sees his mother’s stony face, so like Octavia’s, advising her, _Slay your demons, Octavia_. Bellamy knows about slaying demons, too. The waking nightmare of the memory of 300 souls torn from their bodies by machine gun fire lingers always just on the edge of his consciousness, ready to overtake him. Slaying his demons hadn’t worked either.

He’d never considered that in trying to slay his own demons, he’d awakened his sister’s.

***

He’s halfway back to his quarters when it sinks in. The world will end, and he might never see his sister again. Somehow, it’s the latter that steals the breath from his lungs. Protecting her was first mission in life, and now he has failed even to do that.

By the time he reaches the room that had been assigned to him after Mt. Weather, in what used to be the nicest part of Alpha station - the irony had made him sick to his stomach at the time - he’s barely breathing at all. 

He staggers into the room without hearing the door close behind him. Before he can make it to the bed, or the chair he trips over a book - one of Gina’s - and lands hard on his knees. His vision is blurring and he can practically hear his heart racing and, dimly, he realizes he’s having a panic attack.

It wasn’t something he’d ever experienced himself, but Octavia had had them sometimes when she had to hide under the floor for an inspection, or a solar flare. He strains to remember how he used to calm her. He remembers lowering himself to her level and holding her elbows, giving her plenty of room to breath. He remembers squeezing her arms in time with his breaths and soothing her with his words, and within minutes having her inhale and exhale in time with him. 

Now, he tries and fails to control his own breathing, pressing his forehead against the cold metal of the bedside table in an attempt to ground himself. But the panic is all consuming - it’s images of guilt and fear and loss: dead kids on the floor, Gina’s hands in his hair, the heat of a discharged machine gun in his hands, Clarke shaking uncontrollably in the Commander’s chair, Octavia storming out of the throne room, the free falling feeling of realizing it was all for nothing. That everyone he loves is dead anyway. 

He doesn’t know how long it is before he notices his knees hurting from being pressed into the cold floor of his room. He pulls himself up to sit on his bed and runs his hand over his face. 

Every word of encouragement and conviction that they will survive this that he’s given to Clarke over the past five days plays on a loop in his head. He meant it, every time. His belief in her and in their people has never wavered. And no part of him can bear Clarke in pain, so he’d told her: _we’ll figure something out_. 

But something about it had felt empty, almost insincere, and he hadn’t realized what it was until now. The salvation that he wants for his people and that he and Clarke will fight to find; it’s not for him. He feels a kind of perverse relief as he admits it to himself. 

He doesn’t deserve to survive the tide of radiation that will swallow the Earth. He would let it consume him whole, but resigning himself to his own death is one thing; Resigning himself to deaths of the people he loves is something he’s never been able to do. He’s failed them enough. So he’ll fight. Not for his own salvation, but for Miller’s, Monty’s, Raven’s, Harper’s, Jasper’s… Octavia’s. Clarke’s. For a brief moment he feels the weight of his guilt slacken in his lungs. Salvation isn’t for him. He can breathe again.

That’s where Clarke finds him: sitting on the edge of his bed, forearms resting on his thighs, eyes unfocused in thought. When she enters the room, she barely hesitates before crossing it to him, probably put off by his stillness. Or maybe he’s been gone for too long; he has no idea how much time has passed since he left to speak to Octavia.

She stops right in front of him, so he’s eye level with her stomach. “Bellamy, what happened?” She sounds concerned, and Bellamy doesn’t really know how to answer her question, so he goes with the simplest version.

“She left.” He hears Clarke suck in a breath. When she slides her hand over the t-shirt on his shoulder, his skin feels like it burns at her touch. 

He looks up at her. “What’s going on?” he asks, in an attempt both to distract her from her concern and himself from giving in to the easy desire of having Clarke comfort him. 

“Raven has some new models she wants to show us.” She still seems worried about him, a soft look in her eyes, but she removes her hand from his shoulder. Somehow its absence is heavier than its weight.

Bellamy swallows and stands. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”


	5. Small Victories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s curious, she thinks. Every person she tells seems to go through the same series of initial emotions. There’s that look of muted shock as the words tumble out of Clarke’s mouth: face frozen, eyes wide. But by the time she finishes and the truth sinks in, there’s an almost universal expression that occurs, more pronounced in some than others. It’s an almost-smile, a cynical almost-tilting of the lips accompanied by a head shake or an eye roll or a sigh, like an “of course.” Of course the ground had something else in store for them. Of course, ultimately, it’s radiation that would come for them, full circle from the beginning.
> 
> She sees a similar expression on the faces of the delinquents, though it morphs quickly into naked fear and shock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *hides face* I was gonna post this yesterday but sometimes Christmas parties are more lit than you expected! Anyway, hopefully I'll be posting the next chapter on Monday <3

Telling Kane and Abby about the nuclear reactors goes down almost exactly as Clarke expects. She, Bellamy, Kane and Abby sit around the table in what used to be the council chambers. When Clarke breaks the news, Abby covers her mouth with one hand, the other finding Marcus’s on top of the table. Kane, for his part, barely reacts. He stares at Clarke intently. 

When Clarke is finished, he says, “You’re sure.” It’s not a question, but Clarke nods anyway. 

Abby lowers her hand and leans toward her daughter. Her eyes are glistening but her voice doesn’t waver. “How long do we have, Clarke?”

“Raven says Arkadia won’t be survivable past 2 months.” Despite Abby’s emotional response - her mother’s aptitude for feeling empathy on a mass scale is impressive - Clarke can already see her working through the problem in her head.

“If it’s that soon, some of us may already have latent exposure to radiation. We don’t have near the capacity we’d need to treat even mild acute radiation sickness in a large part of the population.” She looks around the table. “This could go bad a lot sooner than 2 months from now.”

Clarke, Bellamy and Kane absorb this information. Kane breaks the silence. “Who else knows?”

“Us, and Raven,” Clarke answers. 

“And Octavia.” It’s the first thing Bellamy’s said since he sat down, and she turns her head toward him. He’s been off since Octavia left Arkadia yesterday, and he didn’t tell her that he’d informed Octavia of what was coming before she left. It hits Clarke like a slap in the face; he’d told her, and she still left. Clarke recovers quickly from the surprise, turning back to Kane.

Kane looks between Clarke and Bellamy for a moment before he asks, “Well, what are our next steps? Who do we tell?”

“Jaha.” Abby’s response is automatic, and it takes both Bellamy and Clarke off guard. Everyone at the table looks towards her.

“He’s still in medical but he’s almost back to his old self.” At the questioning looks she receives, she clarifies, “He’s lucid. And he might know something about this. I can’t imagine it wasn’t considered in the Exodus charter.”

“Okay, we’ll talk to him then.” Everyone nods, and there’s a pause before Clarke continues. “We’re going to tell the rest of the 100.”

Abby’s mouth parts in concern and Kane looks skeptical but not surprised, but before either of them can say anything, Clarke cuts them off. “We’re going to need people working on this problem. People we can trust not to talk before it’s time. Mom,” She turns to address Abby directly, “they can handle it.”

“Clarke, I know what they’ve been through, but -”

“They deserve to know.” Bellamy’s statement cuts Abby off with finality. Clarke can’t quite place the tone in his voice. His eyes are uncharacteristically opaque. “They were the first ones to risk themselves down here. We owe them the truth.”

Abby looks slightly cowed, but Kane is looking at Bellamy with something akin to agreement. “He’s right. If we have to send messages, scouts - the 100 are our best bet.”

“Okay then,” Clarke doesn’t quite know how to wrap up the meeting, how to bridge the gap between what half feels like a council meeting and half like a family discussion. 

“We can meet you in the med bay to talk to Jaha in 20 minutes,” she says to her mother as they stand up. To her surprise, when her mother rises she steps around the table to fold Clarke in an embrace. Abby doesn’t say anything as Clarke hugs her back, and out of the corner of her eye she sees Kane try and fail to catch Bellamy’s gaze. When Abby steps away from Clarke, she surreptitiously wipes a tear before it can fall from her eye.

“See you in medical,” is all she says.

***

It’s just past dusk when the remaining delinquents gather in Raven’s workroom. A tap from Bellamy on several shoulders and 20 minutes later they’re all crammed into the small room full of what looks like mechanical junk and a “chemistry corner” that Raven colorfully warns them against disturbing.

Clarke looks around the room at the remaining 100. There are some younger delinquents they rescued from Mt. Weather who had survived the ALIE ordeal as well, but of the kids who were close to being of age when the dropship landed, this was it. 

Miller leans against a work table in a deliberately casual way, only a little belied by the protective hand he has on Bryan's shoulder where the other boy sits next to him. Jasper’s nervous, and these days depressive, energy is palpable from the far side of the room. Murphy lurks in the back of the room like he hasn’t really decided if he wants to be there or not while Monty and Harper sit side-by-side on one of Raven’s workbenches in the middle of the space. Raven herself lounges against the wall off to the side of the room, letting Clarke and Bellamy take center stage in a move that clearly states, _don’t ask me, this isn’t my party_.

Eight of them. That’s it. After all the blood and death and pain, this is what they’ve been reduced to. Less than a dozen, still with some of their number missing. Octavia's absence feels like a sucking vacuum in the room. She feels rather than sees Bellamy’s eyes instinctively flick around the room for her for a moment before he remembers.

Harper is the first one to speak, her voice sharp.

"What the hell is going on? Kane was freaked on shift today and you two have been weird since you got back."

It's unclear whether her question is directed at Clarke or Bellamy. Clarke glances at Bellamy before answering.

“There’s something we need to tell you all, something we learned from Becca in the City of Light that’s going to happen.” She barely hesitates before launching in. “Earth is dying. In a matter of months, 96% of the planet will be too radiation-soaked to inhabit.”

It’s curious, she thinks. Every person she tells seems to go through the same series of initial emotions. There’s that look of muted shock as the words tumble out of Clarke’s mouth: face frozen, eyes wide. But by the time she finishes and the truth sinks in, there’s an almost universal expression that occurs, more pronounced in some than others. It’s an almost-smile, a cynical almost-tilting of the lips accompanied by a head shake or an eye roll or a sigh, like an “of course.” Of course the ground had something else in store for them. Of course, ultimately, it’s radiation that would come for them, full circle from the beginning.

She sees a similar expression on the faces of the delinquents, though it morphs quickly into naked fear and shock.

“So you’re saying the Earth was survivable when we were in _space_ for 100 years, but less than a year after we land, it won’t be?” Jasper sneers, breaking the silence first. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he seems to be holding on to the angry irony stage longer than most.

Clarke doesn’t know what to do other than nod. 

Monty starts, “Clarke…” like he wants to say something, but it hangs in the air. His dark eyes are sad and afraid and he looks like _he_ wants to comfort _her_ and she can barely stand to look at him. Harper hugs herself next to him.

“You knew.” Miller finally speaks up, and for almost the first time she can remember there is not even a hint of dry wit in his voice. His volume rises with his anger. “You’ve known about this since _Polis_ and you’re just telling us now? What gives you the _right_ -”

“Hey!” Raven’s voice is uncharacteristically sharp as she cuts Miller off, daggers in her eyes. “Watch it, Miller.”

Jasper chimes in, fake smirk still on his face, “Yeah, Miller, you know it’s her job to decide how we live and die any-”

Harper shakes her head. “Oh come on, Jas, that’s not fair -” 

“A _week_ , Harper -”

“Miller -”

“Shut up.” Bellamy’s voice isn’t angry or loud, but it immediately silences Jasper, Harper and Miller and draws the eyes of everyone in the room. “Fighting gets us nowhere. And we had to make sure this was real before we told anyone.”

“What are we going to do?” Monty’s voice is quiet but somehow seems to echo throughout the room. 

Unlike earlier, when Harper asked what was going on, this question seems to be directed at Bellamy. It doesn’t offend Clarke; to the contrary, she feels a warmth spread at the knowledge that he’s back by her side, that they can share this burden together again.

It’s the same as it’s always been. Her people look to her to lead, yes. They look to her when they don’t know what to do, don’t have a plan, are confused. But they look to Bellamy when they’re _scared_. And the fear on their faces right now is clear and visceral.

“We survive. We fight. 4% of this planet is safe, and we’ll find a way to get to it. Hell, we’ll bring it to us. But we all have to be in this -” Clarke thinks she sees his eyes flit imperceptibly to Jasper, and then to Murphy in the back of the room. She’d forgotten he was even there, quiet as he was in the shadows - “if we’re gonna survive this.”

She’d almost forgotten how persuasive Bellamy could be, how easily he could sweep people up in the melody of his deep voice. It’s odd listening to him speak like that now, when everything about Bellamy feels as familiar to her as her own self. The last time he spoke like this, in her memories from the dropship, he was all untouchable passion and defiant anger. She hadn’t yet witnessed his gentleness, his fear, his doubt. Somehow, she’s more captivated knowing all of him.

His words are met with nods from most of the room; Miller’s anger calmed, Harper’s fear hardened into purpose. Clarke takes advantage of the silence.

“Monty, Jasper - Raven will need you to help flesh out the models she has. We have to understand the science if we’re going to escape this thing.” Clarke looks to Raven, who is now standing up a little straighter at the side of the room. She nods.

“Yeah. If you meet me here in the morning, we can start talking possible radiation inoculation and 100-year old nuclear plant design. Should be fun.” 

Jasper huffs at the end of her sentence. His mouth is still pursed angrily but his eyes are agonized. “I’m done taking orders,” is all he says before before he turns and walks out of the room. Bellamy immediately turns to the others, directing attention away from Jasper’s exit.

“Miller - you, Bryan and Harper will meet with me and Kane in the morning. I think it’s time for one last mapping run.” Bellamy raises his eyebrows at Miller until Miller responds in kind with his signature dry half-smile.

“That sounds about right.” Miller squeezes Bryan’s shoulder where his hand rests. He reaches down to help his boyfriend up. “See you tomorrow, then.” 

As they exit, Clarke thinks she might be the only one to notice the empty look on Bryan’s face. She realizes belatedly that he hadn’t said anything the whole meeting. He’d just sat, stock still under Miller’s hand, going paler and paler the more she spoke. She wonders if Jasper is not the only one not in the right headspace to fight. She’s interrupted from her own thoughts as Monty stands.

When she turns her attention to him, she notices his hand is in Harper’s. With a pang, Clarke wonders when that happened. “We’ll see you in the morning, Raven.” 

As Monty and Harper walk out of the workroom, Murphy steps forward from the shadows. Clarke can’t read his expression, but she figures it counts in his favor that he’s still there.

“And what’s my assignment, captains?” His tone is dry but not insincere. Clarke and Bellamy glance at each other before turning to Murphy together.

“We need you to leave,” Clarke answers. Murphy only has a moment to look taken aback before she continues, “We need you to bring a message to Luna. She’s our best hope to survive this.”

“Luna…” She sees it click in his brain. “The last nightblood.” He looks between them almost suspiciously. “Why me?”

Before they can say anything, Murphy lets out a humorless chuckle and answers his own question. “Emori. You think she can help me find my way to Luna. Get her to trust me.”

“Can’t she?” Clarke asks. From what she’s heard, Murphy’s grounder girlfriend is quite resourceful, and well-traveled. 

Murphy’s jaw clenches for a brief moment. “Yeah. She probably can.”

“Okay, then,” Bellamy says, apparently not eager to stretch out the conversation. “We’ll talk more in the morning.”

Murphy hesitates before he turns to go. “That’s not the only reason you chose me, though.”

At Clarke’s questioning look, he clarifies. “Doesn’t hurt that no one will notice I’m gone.” There’s an almost-bitterness in his voice, a kind of longing Clarke never thought she’d hear from John Murphy. Then again, she never thought he’d manually pump a human heart for an hour just to keep her alive, either. Before she or Bellamy can answer, a voice rings out from behind her.

“Well _I_ certainly won’t miss you, Murphy,” Raven drawls. Clarke had almost forgotten the mechanic was still there. Despite her words, there’s a hint of playfulness in her tone, and Clarke thinks she sees the corner of Murphy’s mouth lift before he turns to leave.

“Until tomorrow then,” he throws over his shoulder. As soon as Murphy disappears from sight, Bellamy makes to leave as well, abruptly stepping towards the door without a word. Instinctively, Clarke reaches out to grab his wrist.

“Wait,” she says. He turns toward her and, to her dismay, she sees that opaqueness back in his eyes. He looks at her expectantly. She doesn’t know exactly what she stopped him for, so she takes a step closer. 

“I just - are you okay?” she asks, lowering her voice to keep Raven from hearing. She searches his eyes for an answer, but there is none. They’re almost the same as they always are - brown, warm, patient - just with a shield she can’t remember being there.

“I’m fine. Just tired.” He gently pulls his wrist from her hand, giving her fingers a short squeeze as he does. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Clarke watches him go, unable to suppress the sinking feeling in her stomach. When she turns away from the door, Raven is watching her carefully. Clarke speaks to forestall any forthcoming questions.

“You really think you can inoculate someone against radiation sickness?”

Raven gives her a look that says _I know you’re deflecting_ before answering the question. “I doubt it. I’ll have to talk to Abby. What I really need to figure out is if there is a way to cool a reactor once it’s started to melt down, and to keep it cool.” She shakes her head frustratedly. “The chemistry’s just a bit beyond me.”

Clarke leans one hand on the table Raven’s standing next to and drags the other over her face. It strikes her as a mannerism she must have picked up from Bellamy. 

“We need Jasper,” she says bitterly.

Raven puts her own hand on the table near Clarke’s; not touching, but close enough that Clarke looks up and meets the other girl’s eyes.

“He’ll come around Clarke. They all will. They’re just scared.” Something about Raven’s use of the word “they” makes Clarke think she’s not the only one who noticed Bryan’s pallor. 

Then something else strikes her, and she can’t help but ask, “You’re not scared?”

Raven looks momentarily taken aback by the question, looking down at the table in front of her, but she recovers quickly. When she answers, her tone is pensive. 

“Of course I’m scared. When you first told me, I was terrified. Angry. I didn’t want to die.” She looks up at Clarke and there is a sort of wonder in her eyes. “And then I realized: _I didn't want to die_. If you had told me this a month ago, I would have laughed at you. I would have marched straight out into that radiation cloud myself. But now…”

“You don’t want to die,” Clarke finishes in a whisper. She inexplicably feels like she wants to cry. 

Raven gives her a small smile and nods. “It’s the small victories, sometimes.” 

When Raven straightens up off the table, her voice returns to it’s normal brusque tone. “Speaking of, we won’t be winning _any_ victories if you don’t get some sleep Clarke. So get out of my workshop. Go on, scram.”

Clarke gives Raven a grateful smile before she turns to leave. “See you in the morning, then.”

“Oh, and Clarke,” Raven’s voice calls as Clarke reaches the doorway. “He’ll come around too. Bellamy, I mean.”

Clarke, taken aback, whirls around to ask the other girl what she’s talking about, but Raven has already turned to her gadgets in a clear dismissal. Swallowing her uncertainty, Clarke turns and leaves.


	6. New Found Land

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke thought of her life in two distinct parts: before the ground, and the ground. In her mind, Bellamy is part of the ground. Spending time with him inside the walls of the ark, feeling for all the world like they could be floating in space rather than languishing on a doomed planet, she is forced to reconcile those two sides of her. What startles her is how much Bellamy feels like he belongs to both: the cold gray walls of the ark that can’t help but feel like home, and the one person who's become her home on the ground. It occurs to her that Bellamy is not so much a part of the ground as he is a part of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, I just got a temporary job so these might not be one per day folks. But I am still trying to finish asap!
> 
> Also, jut a a point of interest, I do believe the s4 "lifeboat" thing is metaphorical; I doubt there will be actual boats involved, but I decided to write literal boats into this fic because, well, I can. Enjoy

Spending extended amounts of time in Bellamy's room shouldn't feel as weird as it does. On the ark, Clarke spent plenty of time with boys and girls in private bedrooms, usually doing things much less innocent than poring over maps and readouts and reviewing the most likely paths of survival in the face of a nuclear apocalypse. 

The feeling can’t be from the sheer amount of time or the close quarters; she and Bellamy spent plenty of hours in cramped tents at the Dropship. She thinks maybe it’s something about being alone with him in a room with a door that closes and bed that takes up a quarter of the space and his clothes on the shelf and his books on the bedside table that makes her feel... uncomfortable. But whenever her skin starts to tingle with the feeling, she’ll look up and meet Bellamy's eyes, or he'll ask her a question, or hand her a map, and she'll feel like maybe that's not it at all. Maybe it's that she's _too_ comfortable here alone with him, on the very station where she spent her childhood.

It's the same feeling she had when they first returned from Polis almost two weeks ago and waited for Raven's computer to tell them their fate. The hours in that dusty room were the first she'd spent alone on the ark with Bellamy, and it felt like her worlds colliding. 

Clarke thought of her life in two distinct parts: before the ground, and the ground. In her mind, Bellamy is part of the ground. Spending time with him inside the walls of the ark, feeling for all the world like they could be floating in space rather than languishing on a doomed planet, she is forced to reconcile those two sides of her. What startles her is how much Bellamy feels like he belongs to both: the cold gray walls of the ark that can’t help but feel like home, and the one person who's become her home on the ground. It occurs to her that Bellamy is not so much a part of the ground as he is a part of her.

In any case, she doesn't have a lot of time to dwell on the confusion she feels, because most of her time in Bellamy’s room is spent in a barely suppressed panic about whether she and her people are going to survive past the next two months.

Tonight in particular, Clarke doesn’t have the energy to parse her feelings about how she feels sitting on Bellamy’s bed, back against the wall, legs crossed while he sits on a chair next to it, looking at a rudimentary map spread on the mattress before him. The air between them feels defeated. Tonight seems like the night to finally admit to themselves: they’re running out of options.

It’s been a week since they had their first conversation with Jaha, the one Clarke was banking on to provide them with some useful information, a roadmap they might follow. She remembers finding the older man, who used to be as close as an uncle to her, sitting up in his cot in the medbay, look paler than she’d ever seen him. 

Ever since Clarke could remember, Jaha always had charisma, a certain spark in his eye that made him respected, revered, even feared on the ark; it was the same spark that turned playful when he and Jake used to bet on old football matches. Sitting up in a cot in the spartan medical unit, however, that spark was gone, like maybe ALIE had gutted him of even that.

Jaha’s state didn’t stop Clarke from jumping right into the problem, time clearly being of the essence. Bellamy hung back behind her shoulder, clearly not eager to engage Jaha. She briefly wondered if the hesitance stemmed from his near-fatal shooting of the man or if avoidance of Ark authority figures had been so ingrained in Bellamy for so long that it was subconscious.

When Jaha was frustratingly silent in the wake of Clarke’s explanation of what was happening and her questioning if he knew anything that could help, Clarke’s voice had grown more desperate.

“There must have been a plan - in the Exodus charter, somewhere. How did no one foresee this?" 

She wanted to reach forward and shake the man, to make him feel the urgency of the situation - an urgency that was not reflected in his face or posture. But before she could reach out, the former Chancellor spoke up.

"There _was_ a plan."

Clarke and Bellamy waited, staring at Jaha until they realized why more of an answer wasn't forthcoming. Clarke felt her heart sink. _Mt. Weather_. Mt. Weather _was_ the plan. A giant, radiation-free bunker. An incubator in which to rebuild the human race. And they'd destroyed it. 

In hindsight, that so many had died over bone marrow seemed laughably insignificant in the face of their current situation. In that moment, Clarke wondered how many more times her and Bellamy's lethal decision would reach up out of history to screw them.

Tonight, with one of Bellamy’s ark-issue pillows behind her back, she finally admits to herself why the Exodus charter had outlined no contingencies outside of Mt. Weather. It was because there were none. She watches as Bellamy traces the map with his finger again, his unruly dark hair falling into his face.

“If only we weren’t smack in the middle of the most densely packed nuclear reactors on Earth…” he mutters. She knows what he’s talking about. From what Monty gleaned from the ark mainframe over the past week, the United States’ eastern seaboard was one of the hotbeds for nuclear power before the apocalypse. 

Monty, Miller and Harper had ridden to within what Raven called the “closest safe distance, and by ‘safe’ I mean you won’t die instantly” of the nearest nuclear plant to ascertain the accuracy of the ark’s records. They were all where they thought they’d be, which meant that the Ark records were reliable. Which, in effect, meant -

“We have nowhere to go.” Bellamy concludes. When he looks up at Clarke, his eyes look as tired as she feels. It must have been two… three days since she’s had a good night’s sleep in the cot in her mother’s cabin. Neither Kane, Abby nor the rest of the delinquents seemed to have the time or inclination to sleep either since they learned the truth.

“There are only two ways out of this,” Clarke knows she’s repeating herself, but with the dearth of any new information, she and Bellamy have taken up the habit of talking contingency plans to death to make themselves feel useful.

“One,” she holds up one exhausted finger, “Raven can find a way to make us immune to higher levels of radiation, or find a way to treat it sustainably. Two,” she flick up second finger before letting her hand fall into her lap, “Luna comes through.” 

Clarke has never felt more restless than she does waiting for word from Murphy. Knowing the importance of talking to Luna, Clarke would have returned to Boatkru herself if she didn’t know for a fact that she was the last person Luna would listen to. She doubts she would even be allowed to board the rig again.

“You really think her boats could take us far enough away to be safe?” Bellamy asks. “I only saw a few barges when we were on the rig, and none of them looked like they could sustain a large population for a long time.”

“Only Luna could really know that, but both Raven and I think there’s a route, by boat, where we could outrun this.” 

“Right, right, I know, it’s a 1500 mile boat ride to - where is it? Northern Canada?”

Clarke nods, trying not to think about how flimsy that plan sounds when he puts it like that. “It would have been called ‘Newfoundland.’”

Bellamy snorts. “New-found-land. Ironic.” They’re both silent for a moment, not really appreciating the irony. It’s Bellamy who gives voice to his doubt first.

“How do we know the barges can even make it that far?” He shakes his head. “What about fuel? Food? It sounds like a long shot, Clarke.”

She agrees with him, but there’s nothing new to say. “It might be our only shot. We’ll know what Luna’s resources are when Murphy gets back.”

When he doesn’t say anything immediately in response, she leans her head back against the wall, eyes closing despite herself. It’s a few minutes before Bellamy speaks again.

“Didn’t Raven say she was working on a way to cool the reactors?” Clarke can tell Bellamy is looking back up at her, but she can’t bring herself to open her eyes from where they’ve fallen closed, her head resting against the wall at the head of Bellamy’s bed. 

“Yeah, but she also said cooling one or even two wouldn’t matter; the eastern United States is a lost cause. Besides, neither she nor Jasper think we have the resources to sustainably cool a plant that’s melting down. They have some ideas for some short-term fixes, but I don’t see how that’s going to help us.”

Clarke had been relieved when, less than two days after she and Bellamy told the 100, she entered Raven’s workroom to see Jasper reading over some of Raven’s notes in her “chemistry corner.” Not wanting her presence to interfere with Jasper’s cooperation, she motioned Raven out into the hallway to give her the message from Abby.

Abby and Raven were coordinating on possible radiation treatment methods or inoculation, but the two women didn’t have much time to brainstorm in person due to Abby’s role as head doctor and Raven’s many different projects - all directed at finding a way to survive. Clarke thought Raven might be the only person, other than Bellamy, who slept less than her. 

On that day in particular though, Raven looked more relieved than tired. 

“Monty talked to him,” she responded to Clarke’s questioning glance towards the room where Jasper worked. “He’s still hurting, but… he wouldn’t just let us die. Not a moment too soon, either. I was just hitting a dead end on cooling mechanisms…”

Despite Jasper’s help, a cooling mechanism that might save them all had not come to fruition, so by mutual agreement Raven, Jasper, and Abby had turned a large portion of their attention to treating radiation sickness, though there were no diagnosed cases of it in Arkadia yet. Bellamy had brought the question about cooling up several times, however, making her wonder what he’s thinking.

“I just think we’re going to want something like that in our back pocket. It could buy us time.” 

This time Clarke opens her eyes when she responds, though it’s harder than she expects. She tries to meet his dark eyes, wondering if the odd distance that has surfaced intermittently over the past week has returned. But he’s staring straight ahead, as if the wall on the opposite side of his quarters will provide answers.

“And it would cost us lives.” At her words, he turns his eyes to her, and it relaxes her when they are raw and warm and _feeling_ ; Bellamy’s eyes. His face is serious when he responds.

“Some things are worth dying for.” His words make her shiver; they remind her of what she’d once said to Luna: _some causes are worth killing for_. She hates that this is what their lives have become.

She nods slowly. “Well we won’t know anything until Murphy gets back. And if he’s not back in two days, we’re sending someone after him. Luna’s our best hope.” 

Clarke lets her head fall backward once more, but scooches down a little so it falls against the pillow instead of the wall. Suddenly the ark-issue pillow doesn’t seem so threadbare. Bellamy’s deep breathing is calming, and somehow the weight of his elbows on the other side of the bed promise to keep away her nightmares. She doesn’t even feel herself slip into unconsciousness.

***

When Clarke opens her eyes, she doesn’t know where she is. She’s been tucked into a bed, but it isn’t hers, and neither is the room. It’s not until he processes the arm that’s been thrown over her leg that she remembers. Sitting up on her elbows, she can see where Bellamy is sleeping, still sitting in his chair next to the bed, with his head resting on one arm and the other thrown out over the lump in the covers her legs make. 

Seeing his face relaxed in sleep, a rush of affection washes through Clarke, and she’s momentarily, insanely grateful that he’s with her. She bites back a smile at the thought of him awkwardly trying to tuck her in without waking her. She allows herself to feel the positive feeling for a moment before the dread, despair, and guilt at sleeping at a time like this seep back into her bones.

As she carefully extricates herself from Bellamy’s bed, she decides _uncomfortable_ is definitely not the feeling she gets, cooped up in this small room with Bellamy. No. It’s longing. It’s the sour twist of longing poisoned by impossibility. The impossibility of a normal life, one with friends and family and normalcy and spending long hours in her best friend’s room without the threat of death looming above them.

Clarke shoves the feeling away as she leaves Bellamy’s quarters, content to let him sleep for another hour or so until the sun is higher in the sky. What Clarke sees when she emerges from the ark into the newly risen sun, however, makes her think Bellamy will be waking sooner rather than later. Not far in the distance, Clarke spots two figures on horseback steadily trotting towards Arkadia. Even from this distance, the color and style of their dress make it clear. Boatkru.

Luna has received their message.

**Author's Note:**

> Join me on tumblr @wellamyblake


End file.
